Total Pageviews

Sunday, 30 December 2012

There have been times in my 65 years on this planet that
I didn’t have access to a television and somehow I managed to survive. I never
suffered from withdrawal. I never let my fondness for TV stand in the way of
other activities but none the less I was hooked by the box at a very young age.
More than anything my attraction to TV years ago and still today is the
interest in being exposed to something I wasn’t aware of and the delight in
finding something new.

Earlier today I was watching PBS and found out that Jack
Kerouac spent 63 days by himself in the 1950s on a mountain top in the Cascade
Mountains in Washington State trying to find himself. The mountain was called
Desolation Mountain. TV can be fascinating.

On the other hand, years ago I was living in North
Vancouver and watched every weekly episode of Rich Man, Poor Man. Unfortunately
the power went out in the last program and I never really found out how the
whole thing ended.

Growing up in Montreal, TV came along when I was about 6
or 7 years of age, around 1954. For those that grew up in the same era as I
did, we had a lot on our plates at that tender age. School, hearing stories
about WW2 and The Great Depression, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, finding
out about the atomic bomb, a new music called rock and roll, and this box with
a window that sat in the corner of our living rooms that we talked about every
following day out in the school yard. “Did you see……?”

You know you are getting old if you have any memories of
what life was like before television. In the early 1950s there was a family
tradition in our house for a number of years of having sandwiches on Sunday
night and listening to several radio programs. Programs like Our Miss Brooks
(Gosh Mr. Boynton!”), Amos And Andy.
(“Holy mackerel there Andy!”), and Burns And Allen (Say goodnight Gracie.”).

Here are some of my memories of television in the 1950s
as a kid growing up in Montreal.

In 1953 I was six years old and hadn’t a clue what
television set was. A guy down the block had one with a very small screen. It
was maybe 14 inches across. We spent a few minutes watching kind of jerky and
feint images of a spaceship. A year later in 1954 almost every family in the
neighbourhood had a console model television. Some of TV makes back then were
Philco, RCA, Admiral, Zenith, Marconi, Motorola, and Fleetwood.

Time well wasted.

One of the interesting things about early TV is that
adults were just about as naïve as children were about this new medium that we
were being exposed to. There was an overall excitement about having moving
pictures come directly into your living room. In the beginning TV was a finicky
devise. Tin foil and steel wool were sometimes attached to the antennas that
sat on top of the TV to get better reception. What we called “rabbit ears”.
There didn’t seem to be a lot of science about getting good reception. It was
like banging the side of a pinball game or rubbing the top of a one armed
bandit slot machine.

Canadian
TV

The first TV station in Montreal was CBMT which was
English and part of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). A few months
later it was followed by CBFT, a French language TV station also part of the
CBC.

In the beginning there was nothing on the tube until
about 5 p.m. If you turned on the TV during the day all you got was a test
pattern with an Indian head on it.

There were at least two programs that were shown on both
English and French TV in Montreal at the time. One was about a large French
Canadian family called The Plouffe Family and the other was a puppet show
called Papineau and Capucine. The two puppet characters that I remember were a
bear that didn’t talk but made sounds like….”menamanuh, menamanuh”and Pow Pow who was a convict with a striped
rimless hat and striped clothes. I once had a Pow Pow puppet as a toy but it
fell apart when I started chewing on its rubber head. The bear on Papineau and
Capucine was probably the first impression I ever heard around grade school of
a character we had seen on TV. Over the coming years there would be many more.

At 7:00 p.m. during the week there was a news program
that came from the CBC in Toronto. It was called Tabloid. Dick MacDougal and
Elaine Grand did the interviews, Gil Christie read the news and Percy Saltzman
did the weather and when he was finished he would toss his stick of chalk in
the air and say….”and that’s the weather.”

Percy Saltzman

I think it was 1954 when we got our first TV. It was only
a year or so later when people started putting antennas on their roofs to get
some American TV stations, WPTZ in Plattsburg, New York (NBC), WCAX in
Burlington, Vermont (CBS), and WMTW in Poland Springs, Maine (ABC) which at one
time was owned by late night talk show host Jack Paar.Comparatively, Canadian TV, which really meant the CBC
because there was no competing Canadian TV network, seemed rather sedate and
American TV was much brasher. Watching hockey or the news was OK but programs
like the intellectual Fighting Words with Nathan Cohen could put kids and some
adults to sleep. Kids and adults wanted American pizzazz. If it meant having
some contraption up on the roof, so be it.

Hockey Night In Canada was the glue that attached
Canadians to the CBC more than anything else. On snowy winter Saturday nights
we would hear Foster Hewitt in Toronto welcome us with “Hello Canada!” from
high atop the gondola at Maple Leaf Gardens. In Montreal it was Danny Gallivan
doing the play by play. In between periods was called the Hot Stove Club or
something close to that. These segments often involved old timers with their
many facial scars offering opinions. Esso was the sponsor of HNIC and Murray
Westgate, a genial type, wished us “Happy Motoring” after pitching the Esso
products. Your Pet, Juliette, a songstress from Vancouver, followed
the hockey game and for many of us the sight of her on the tube meant bedtime.
We went to sleep with names in our heads like Rocket Richard, Ken Mosdell,
Floyd Curry, Butch Bouchard, Gerry McNeil, Dickie Moore, Dick Duff, Frank
Mahovolich, Jean Beliveau, Tim Horton, George Armstrong, Lou Fontinato, Andy
Bathgate, and the great Gordie Howe.

Juliette

Another Canadian TV institution started back then was
Front Page Challenge with Fred Davis as host. Pierre Berton and the blustering
Gordon Sinclair were regular panelists. Years later Sinclair would ask Canadian
Olympic swimmer, Elaine Tanner, how she managed to swim on days that she was
having her period. Mr. Sinclair could be a tacky old codger.

Front Page Challenge

The CBC made a number of attempts at emulating American
television in the 1950s. With the success of Davy Crockett in the US we were
offered a TV series about the Canadian explorer and fur trader, Pierre Radisson.
He was a “coureur des bois” or “runner of the woods.” The same guy they named
those hotels after.

Three other series that ran on CBC in the 50s were
produced in cooperation with American or British television concerns. One was
reworked version of the classic Wallace Beery, Marie Dressler 1933 movie
Tugboat Annie. Another was a program about two long distance truckers called
Cannonball. The younger of the two drivers, an actor named William Campbell,
was married to a gal named Judith (Exner) in real life at the time. She later
became one of John Kennedy’s mistresses. The Last Of The Mohicans was another
series that was made in Canada with cooperation from the CBC but with American
financing and distribution. Lon Chaney Jr. played Chingachgook. It wasn’t half
bad for its time.

The CBC had its own version of Howdy Doody. The host in
Canada was Timber Tom and in the US it was Buffalo Bob. Both versions had Clarabell
The Clown and the Peanut Gallery but we alone had Captain Scuttlebutt. Robert
Goulet and William Shatner played characters on the Canadian version at one
time or other.

Other after school Canadian kid’s TV programs were Maggie
Muggins (most boys wouldn’t be caught dead watching it), Chez Helene, Papinot
and Capucine, Uncle Chichimus, and of course The Friendly Giant
and his pals Rusty and Jerome. People of my age all remember the draw bridge
and the little chairs we were offered to sit in by Mr. Friendly.

The Friendly Giant

Some other CBC TV show back then were Fighting Words with
Nathan Cohen, Mr. Fix-it with Peter Woodhall, Folio, Profile, and Close-Up.
There were also some country shows like Country Calender, Holiday Ranch and
Country Hoe Down. The latter had a mustachioed fiddler named King Ganom who
would turn around in a circle while he played.

Rock and roll started to take shape in the mid-1950s but
seeing it on the CBC throughout the decade was a very rare sight. Instead we
were offered Cross Canada Hit Parade with singers like Wally Coster, Joyce
Hahn, Robert Goulet, and Shirley Harmer who almost always sung the tamer tunes
of the times. “How much is that doggy in the window?”

A couple of army vets, comedians Johnny Wayne and Frank
Shuster, were a staple at the CBC for decades starting in the 1950s. They held
the record for the most guest appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in the US at
58. They were kind of funny I guess for the times.

Wayne & Shuster

If we are honest about it, as soon as Canadians managed
to get access to American TV, other than for a few programs like the news and
weather (farmers liked to know) and hockey, the CBC was kind of a back-up plan for many in
homes across Canada. I think that there was a bit of the anti-Toronto stuff
going on even back then because the CBC kind of gave the impression that
Toronto was where most really intelligent Canadians lived.

American
TV

The choice between watching Canadian TV and American TV
was a bit like choosing between a piano recital and a rock concert. Most
Canadians preferred the hoopla and the more in your face approach of TV from
the US. The personalities on American television seemed warmer and more
exciting.

Oddly enough, one of the more droll American television
personalities, Ed Sullivan, became an institution in Canadian homes every
Sunday night at 8 p.m. with his variety show that was initially called The
Toast Of The Town. Ed trotted out an eclectic mix of performers including
jugglers, acrobats, animal acts, opera singers, Broadway belters, ballet
dancers, animal acts, comedians, and rock and rollers. He would often ask
someone famous in the audience to stand up and take a bow.

A lot of people around my age can remember the first time
we saw so and so on Ed Sullivan. Here are 2 acts that I remember…..The first
was a guy named Mr. Pastry. He had white hair and a white bushy mustache and
wore a cutaway tuxedo. He gulped glasses of champagne while playing musical
chairs by himself. He appeared to become drunker and drunker and the music got
faster and faster. If you don’t know the act…google it on Youtube. The second
was a Yiddish comedian named Myron Cohen…..A man is out walking with his son
when his son spots two dogs having sex. “Daddy what are those dogs doing?” “Pay
no attention my son.” “But daddy what are they doing?” This goes on for a bit
and finally the father tells the son….”It seems like one of the dogs is very
sick and the other one is pushing him to the hospital.” Ba-boom! Rim shot.

Mr. Pastry

One of the neat things about early TV in the 50s is that
we got to see a lot of ex Vaudevillians who were nearing the ends of their
careers. People like Ed Wynn, Eddy Cantor, and Jimmy Durante. TV was a heck of
an opportunity for some to restart their careers. People like Jack Benny,
Jackie Gleason, Burns and Allen, Red Skelton, Dinah Shore, Phil Silvers, Jane
Wyman, Loretta Young, Eve Arden, just to name a few who had had previous careers in the movies or on radio.Sarcasm was almost nonexistent in comedy on TV back then.
Risque jokes simply were not allowed. Telling a dirty joke on live TV could
very well end a career. Instead what was delivered to us was zaniness which
included comedians like Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Ernie Kovacs, or the cast of
characters on The Steve Allen Show (which ran in the same time slot as Ed
Sullivan) that included Bill Dana, Don Knotts, Louis Nye, and Tom Poston. We
always felt comfortable with the laid back George Gobel.

Lonesome George Gobel

Here is a brief list of some of the more notable things
that happened on American TV in the 1950s, in no particular order.#1 The first time we saw Elvis on the tube on The Steve
Allen Show, on Ed Sullivan, on The Dorsey Brothers Show. Steve Allen had no use
for rock and roll and kind of mocked Elvis with a hound dog on the set.

#2 The fixed quiz shows. Charles Van Doren was caught
cheating with the prepared answers on The $64,000.00 Question.

#3 Peter Pan with Mary Martin (Larry Hagman’s mother).
Many parents insisted we watch it and we liked seeing her fly about the stage
suspended by skinny wires. We kind of forgot that Peter Pan wasn’t a woman.

Mary Martin as Peter Pan

#4 Watching the stiff Jack Webb on Dragnet and “just the
facts ma’am” and the hammer hitting the plaque that said Mark VII at the end of
the show.

Jack Webb as Joe Friday on Dragnet

#5 Jackie Gleason threatening his wife Alice in their
dingy apartment…”One of these days Alice…pow right in the kisser!” That
wouldn’t fly today.

Jackie Gleason on The Honeymooners

#6 Lucille Ball stomping grapes or things getting out of
control on the conveyor belt with chocolates or cakes or whatever it was that was on it.

#7 Trying to figure out how Davey Crockett was still
alive for two more programs after he was killed at the Alamo. The Indian chief
who said “Ongothcha!” and Mike Fink, king of the river. I have to confess that
I wore my Davey Crockett pants with the plastic fringes to grade school a few
times.

Fess Parker as Davy Crockett

#8 Feeling very uncomfortable when Ralph Edwards surprised
some star on This Is Your Life when the unsuspecting victim had their whole
family dragged out onto the set and there wasn’t always warm hugs.

#9 Falling in love with Dinah Shore. Could anyone not
like her?

Dinah Shore

#10 Realizing many years later just how bright a man
Edward R. Murrow was.

Here is a brief listing of some of the stuff we watched
on American TV back in the day. But first….a pause for station identification.

Gunsmoke. Maverick. Cheyenne. Wyatt Earp. Have Gun Will
Travel…Wire Paladin San Francisco. Rawhide. The Man From Blackhawk. Bat
Masterson…he wore a cane and derby hat. The Rebel. The Rifleman…played 1st
base for The Montreal Royals in the early 50s. Wanted Dead Or Alive. Death
Valley Days…with Ronald Reagan. Wagon Train. Yancy Derringer.

US Daytime
Quiz Shows

The Price Is Right. Queen For A Day… poor women telling
their stories of misery for a year’s supply of laundry soap. Treasure Hunt. Concentration.
Beat The Clock. Who Do You Trust…with Johnny Carson. Truth Or Consequences.
Kids Say The Darndest Things.

US Nighttime
Quiz Shows

The $64,000.00 Question. Twenty-One, You Bet Your Life
with Groucho Marx…”Say the magic word and win a hundred dollars.” What’s My
Line? I’ve Got A Secret. To tell The Truth. Name That Tune.Tic-Tac-Dough.

Lamp Unto My Feet…a moment of this day for devotion. Oral
Roberts. Billy Graham. Life Is Worth Living with Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. This
Is The Life. (I watched all of these programs but none of it had any effect.)

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

US Sports

All-Star Bowling. Gillette Cavalcade of Sports (Boxing…Gene
Fulmer, Carmen Bassilio, Sugar Ray Robinson). Wrestling. (Little Beaver,
Haystack Calhoun, Sky High Lee). NFL Football. (I used to go over to afriend’s house to watch NFL football on
Sundays sometimes. His dad was a big fan. Back then muddy players and butt
crack were not uncommon.) The World Series.

US Highbrow And Political Shows

GE College Bowl….Ohio State…The political theory of possessive
individualism for 10 points. Person To Person. See It Now. Hallmark Hall Of
Fame. Studio One. The Ed Sullivan Show. US Steel Hour. Playhouse 90. Face The Nation. Meet The Press.

The Medic. The Vise. Cannonball. Liberace…and his brother
George. The Millionaire….my name is Michael Anthony. Soldiers Of Fortune.
Adventures In Paradise. Whirlybirds. Tales Of The Bengal Lancers. Sea Hunt. The
Twilight Zone. American Bandstand. (Rate the record between 35 and 98%.) Perry Mason. Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Liberace.Riverboat.This Is Your Life.

Rod Serling...The Twilight Zone

Movies

In the early stages of broadcast TV stations were
desperate for content. An obvious source, at the time, was to dig up old movies
including shorts. As kids, we discovered The Little Rascals, The Bowery Boys,
and Laurel and Hardy. In some summers Kraft Theatre showed a number of the
classics of black and white movies. Things like Key Largo, The Petrified
Forest, Treasure Island, Goodbye Mr. Chips, and Great Expectations. I used to
watch them with my mother who seemed to know all the character actors. I was
hooked for life on old black and white. I remember the beginning of Kraft
Theatre when a wooden camera with a wooden guy sitting on it would slowly
rotate at the beginning of the program and of course all the wonderful things
you could do with Velveeta cheese in the commercials.

10
1950’s US TV Commercials

#1 Ajax…the foaming cleanser.

#2 Brylcreem…a little dab will do you!

#3 I want my Maypo!

Maypo Cereal.

#4 Shaefer is the one beer to have…when you’re having
more than one. (Before MADD.)

#5 Prudential Insurance. The rock of Gibtralter.

#6 Brusha. Brusha. Brusha. I use new Ipana. Its dandy for
your teeth.

#7 Timex. It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

#8 See the USA in your Chevrolet.

#9 Halo everybody Halo!

#10 N-E-S-T-L-E-S…Nestles make the very best choc…..lat.

And who can forget all the doctors who told us that one
brand of cigarettes was smoother on the throat than others.

It was a great time for television. It wasn’t always
seamless. Sometimes you would see the camera boom or something would crash
somewhere off camera or programs would get cut off because they had run too
long. Everything was fresh. There was so much to see. We were taking a journey.

“You’re travelling through another dimension, a dimension
not only of sight but of mind. A journey into a wonderous land whose boundaries
are that of imagination. There is a signpost up ahead-your next stop, the
Twilight Zone!”

Saturday, 15 December 2012

It was late spring in 1967 in Montreal. I was stone broke
and living in a former coal room in the basement of a fraternity house that was
about to be torn down. I had been camping on the floor of a friend’s room who
was an American student at McGill University from Fairfax, Virginia when the
powers that be in the frat house decided that I was a distraction to his
studies and offered me the windowless room in the basement rent free. You might
say my prospects didn’t look too good.

Expo 67 was about to open and all of the jobs there had
been sewn up by university students some months before. I was glancing through
the local help wanted ads and spotted one that was looking for summer employees
to work on the CN passenger trains out of Montreal. Normally these jobs would
have been snapped up quickly but most young people didn’t want to miss the
chance in taking part in Expo 67.

I went down to Central Station and was pretty well hired
on the spot. I faked being a university student and they never asked for any
proof. Training started a day or two later and I was joined by about twenty
real university students. The guy who showed us the ropes was a no bullshit
type named Mike Hogan who kind of resembled Ernest Borgnine in his prime. He
crammed a lot into our two days of instruction including how to carry a tray.
Our training was done on an old dining car in the train yards. I think they
were located in Point St. Charles.

Being that we were summer help we worked off of what was
called a spare board. We could be called at any time to go anywhere on the CN
line out of Montreal as long as the route was initiated in Montreal. Ottawa,
Toronto, and Winnipeg to the west. North to Senneterre, Quebec. East to Quebec
City, Gaspe, Quebec, and Campbellton, New Brunswick.

We were trained to do two different jobs. One was as a
waiter where we wore a white shirt and a black tie along with a short red
jacket. The other job was the one most of us were not fussy about and that was
as a dishwasher or as they called it on the trains, a “pearl diver”. The
dishwashing area had a fairly small sink that was portioned in two. On one side
was the very hot soapy water and on the other side was water for rinsing. The
hot water was generated by a steam tap. Fortunately, I only found myself covered
in food slop a half a dozen times before exclusively working only as a waiter.

Getting up close to a train can be rather ominous. They
aren’t built of fiberglass. The power of a locomotive is incredible. And the
whole shebang goes hurtling down tracks at high speeds counting on nothing
being in the way. Trains are very unforgiving beasts and not to be taken
lightly. They demand respect.

I was just about ready for my first trip but didn’t have
any black shoes. I found a nice fairly new pair of brown ones that one of the
frat boys had left behind and they fit so I got some black shoe polish and I
was in business. It wasn’t as if the shoes were going to be missed what with
the building about to be torn down.

I didn’t have a phone but shortly after I started to work
I rented a room on Hutchison Street that had a pay phone in the hallway. That
phone was my way of being contacted for a few months. Before that I would just
check in physically at the spare board office that was just outside the south
door to Central Station.

To get to the station platform we took the same stairs
with the brass handrails that the passengers did down to the bowels below. The
first thing I noticed was a lot of hissing sounds and a dank kind of odor.

Central Station Montreal

The guy in charge of the dining car was the steward.
There were usually 4-6 waiters under his command. The kitchen was run by a chef
with 2 or 3 cooks as assistants. The dishwasher was under the steward’s
authority. The porters were almost always black. A few of the cooks were also
black. I can’t recall seeing more than maybe one black waiter. Hey it was the
60s! Oscar Peterson’s brother worked as a chef on the CN trains. The guy that
was in charge of everything on the train was the conductor. He was the sheriff,
the judge and jury, the king. Whatever he said was gospel.

Working on the passenger trains back then had a whole
culture. Almost all of the workers came from rougher parts of Montreal like
Point St. Charles, Little Burgundy, Griffintown and a poor neighbourhood that once had the
nick name Goose Village. Some of them had some resentment for preppy college
boys who were just there for the summer.

Seniority ruled. The longer you worked for the railroad
the better choices you had as to which runs you worked on. The conductors and
stewards wore blue dress jackets that had little bars near one of the sleeve
cuffs that indicated how long they had been with the company. From what I can
recall, the most desired run for old timers was the Montreal-Ottawa one because
you could be in your own bed at home each night. I think a old guy named Jimmy
Dodds had top seniority at the time as far as stewards go.

A lot of the employees had limited educations and they
knew that their jobs were important as far as providing for their families.
That isn’t to say that there weren’t some characters also working on the train.
A few were involved with criminal activities away from the job. There were also
some I wouldn’t have wanted to face in a dark alley. There were some really
tough buggers. The craziest guy I worked with once came out of the kitchen with
his package laid out on a glass celery and olives dish. It was rumoured that he
was once arrested for stealing a TV when it fell on his head from a window
ledge and knocked him cold.

I think waiters and dishwashers got paid something like
$1.30 an hour. We were off the clock as soon as we stepped off of the train.
Meals were free while we were working. When I first started I made the big
mistake of gulping back orange juice like it was water. The tips were pretty
good while we were working as waiters. Our accommodations in other cities were
paid for by the company and always at a 3rd rate hotel including The
Walker House in Toronto, The Empire Hotel in Winnipeg, and The Baker House in
Gaspe, PQ.

CN pay stub 1967.

Over the summer I hardly ever ran into any of the
students I had started with except for one. He was a short Jewish guy who had
to be one of the hairiest people I have ever met. Nice enough guy but he must
have had an itchy life.

It was a really busy summer in 1967 on the trains what
with Expo 67 The passenger cars were packed and some people were quite
demanding. We often had 4 calls for a meal and people were lined up down the
corridor. Some would sit down before we had a chance to clean the table. I got
to be pretty proficient at handling the big serving tray while the train
lurched about and somehow never managed to spill anything on anyone.

I remember one trip between Montreal and Toronto when I
was assigned the duty of wandering through the passenger cars to announce the
first call for dinner. I entered one car and was kind of taken aback by the
sullen looks from some of the passengers. It was a few minutes before it dawned
on me that they were manacled and on their way to the pen in Kingston.

On another trip the staff was eating dinner after having
completed 4 sittings and an old farmer wandered in. We told him that the dining
car was closed but the steward let him eat anyway. Apparently he didn’t like
cigarettes and took it upon himself to put our smokes out in the ashtray they
were resting in.

In the beginning, I would sometimes go down to the last
car and go outside and have a smoke. I would feel little drops of water but
thought nothing of it. Someone later pointed out to me that those little drops
of water were coming from the washrooms.

I started to become a bit of a cowboy. In northern
Ontario if a passenger asked me what lake was outside the window, I would tell
them Round Lake. ”Round Lake?” “Yeah it’s round somewhere.” None of the other
waiters wanted to call bingo after the last meal at night but I kind of liked
it. It gave me a chance to joke around with the young and older babes. There
was one steward, a guy named George Stundon, who was a bit of a cool dude. I
think he asked to get me on his crew if they needed someone from the spare
board. I must have told that guy every joke I ever heard in my then 20 years on
this planet.

Things got very hectic on the train during Expo 67. Once
in a while the steward and chef would agree to condemn some food just so they
could shut the dining car down because of lack of food. Occasionally garbage
was tossed out to the side of the tracks. It was kind of like us and them. The
hordes at the gates.

Trip record Montreal To Winnipeg and back.

The porters and the conductor and assistant conductor
were also fed in the dining car. Some of the young black guys had copped an
attitude. Race relations were a big deal in the 60s. Some of the young black
guys would just glare at you if you asked them a question. There wasn’t any
point in telling them that I wasn’t the one oppressing them. “I’m on your side
man!” I do remember getting pissed one
night with some of the older black porters at a dive in Quebec City called The
Fez.

In 1967 they added a disco car to the passenger train
between Montreal and Toronto where people could dance while hurtling down the
tracks. I was never in that car while working but saw the interior when the
train was in the station. It was decorated in early acid trip.

You may be asking yourself what was on the menu in the
dining car? Maybe not? Anyway, there were about 5 main choices. Prime rib was
#1. A lot of people wanted the end cut but there were only two per roast. I
kind of got sick of the stuff after a while. #2 was some kind of chicken. The
only other entrée I can remember was trout and it was seldom ordered. I think
they pronounce it “trit” in French. Celery and olives (without the package)
came with the meal. Pie and ice cream or pie and cheddar cheese were the desert
standards.

I found that the worst place to sleep at night on the
train was above the wheels unless you really liked listening to that
“clack-clack, clack-clack sound”. I learned what a “deadhead” was, a worker who
was travelling but not being paid.

I never met anyone really famous working on the train. I
saw Elwy Yost (look him up) who was rather tall get on a late night train to
Toronto. I also ran into a folksinger on a trip to Winnipeg. He wrote a song
that became popular in Canada for a few months called Moody Manitoba Morning.

I was too young to work the club car as a bartender. I
probably would have had to take a course. Seemed like a cozy kind of job.
Shmooze with the passengers, load them up on alcohol, get great tips. The
breaking up of fights might not have been much fun. I started bringing home
those empty miniature liquor bottles that held about an ounce of liquor. They
are probably worth something today.

I stayed on at the trains after the summer. I was saving
up a bit for a trip I had planned to take to Australia. You couldn’t quite call
me a college drop-out since I wasn’t going to school anyway. A few of the
regulars would give me a hard time for being a student. If only they knew.

The snows had come. One day I got a call telling me I was
going to Senaterre in northern Quebec . Somewhere past Chicoutimi and on the
way to Chibougamau I think. Love that name. Chibougamau. Anyway, I was changing
into my waiter’s garb when I was told that was not going to be a waiter but
“the” cook. It only involved making sandwiches which wasn’t difficult. When we
got off the train the snow was about 4 feet high on the ground. We had to carry
our valises (there’s an old word) over our heads. I remember the windows in our
hotel were glazed over with ice.

One of the awkward things about working on the trains was
sharing a room in some far off distant city with strangers. It isn’t that
comfortable seeing an old guy you hardly know getting undressed out of the
corner of your eye. The other thing is a lot of these guys liked to get shit
faced drunk when they were out of town. It wasn’t so bad when I was with them
but getting drunk was just a sometimes thing for me.

I had a couple of run-ins with a few waiters but never on
the train. I was sitting at the bar in The Baker House Hotel in Gaspe talking
to a taxi driver when a French Canadian waiter from the trains approached us.
He started giving me a hard time about being a student and I don’t think he was
fussy about my English speaking background either. He was throwing a lot of
insults around and wouldn’t let up. Finally I got up from my seat and punched
him in the noggin knocking him over some nearby empty tables and chairs.

Back then they had newsstands on some trains that were
operated by women. On this trip the the newsstand woman had brought along her
boyfriend who was a bit of a gorilla. I was serving the two of them breakfast
the next morning and the gorilla guy started laughing when he found out that it
was me who was involved in the short fight the night before. Apparently the
waiter had gone to the gorilla’s room seeking help in fighting me. I might have
weighed all of 150 lbs. at the time and I wasn’t Bruce Lee.

I had two run-ins at the Empire Hotel in Winnipeg. I’m
not sure, but this may be the same Empire Hotel that Joni Mitchell sang about
in one of her songs. “Raised On Robbery”. The first run-in happened in the
hallway outside of our room. I was on the way to the bathroom in my skivvies (this
wasn’t a classy hotel) when an old guy accused me of making a lot of noise. He
wouldn’t accept that it wasn’t me and looked like he wanted to lay a beating on
me. He kind of skulked away when I picked up a floor ashtray and told him I
would clobber him if he got any closer.

The 2nd run-in was with another waiter. He had
an English last name but was French. 4 of us were sharing a room and he came
back to the room totally wasted. I was sleeping. He started to harass me with
the student stuff and I told him to take a hike. Then he got in my face and did
a few fake punches at my chin. I knocked him out. He deadheaded it back to
Montreal. It turned out he had once had his jaw wired. I had to explain to the
union guy on the train why I had done what I did.

This same guy had a brother who worked on the trains who
was rumoured to be a pimp. I didn’t like my chances of being on the same crew
and in some strange town with him. Pimp guys were probably out of my league as
far as fighting goes. I did about 5 or 6 more trips and then quit.

I remember the names of some of the smaller towns the
train stopped at. Places like Sioux Lookout, Armstrong, Hornepayne, Gogama, Madapedia,
and Campbelton. I remember some of the characters who worked on the train. One
guy told me about how he had joined the army at 15 and had been in WW2. He said
he had cut fingers off of dead German soldiers on the battlefield to take their
rings. One of the train conductors was also an opera singer. One guy aspired to
be a professional gambler and would get me to play cards with him so he could
practice his skills.

All in all I thought working on the trains was kind of
like the Foreign Legion.

The last time I was on a train other than a sky train in
Vancouver or a subway in other cities was the one from London to Paris. It was
like being on a quiet rocket.

Train travel has fallen off in Canada over the past
decades but there is still something about them. Partly because of our history
I guess. Beats the hell out of having your ass crammed into an airline seat
next to someone with bad breath.Trains
also make better songs than planes. “From Natchez to Mobile….wherever the four
winds blow….”

Saturday, 8 December 2012

Duke Ellington was once asked what he thought jazz was
all about and he answered “It’s all music.”

There are people who live and breathe jazz. Some of them
have whole walls of vinyl records of the greats and the more obscure in their
living rooms. There are folks who can tell you who played with who and when.
Some have met jazz musicians in their lives and have formed personal
relationships with them. Some might even feel that they are part of a small unofficial
club. At best, jazz has a small market place. It isn’t kid’s music and requires
more attention. To play the music requires a lot of skill. It is almost
impossible to fake.

Like most other baby boomers, I grew up on rock and roll.
A few years later it was folk music. Then came the British invasion. For me
personally, rock started to fade away in the early 1980s although there were
still some good tunes every now and then.

I was always aware of jazz growing up but never really
looked at the music in any depth. Occasionally on TV in the 1950s and 1960s I
would see some of the jazz greats but most often they were doing tunes in the
pop music fashion, Peggy Lee singing Fever, Sarah Vaughan singing Broken
Hearted Melody, Louis Armstrong and Hello Dolly. On a rare occasion you might
see Dave Brubeck and Take Five or Erroll Garner playing Misty.

Montreal, where I grew up, was part of the circuit for
great jazz musicians over the years. Maynard Ferguson, Oscar Peterson, and
Oliver Jones all grew up in Montreal. I remember once listening to a radio
interview with Billy Eckstine. I think Montreal had a warm place in the hearts
a lot of black jazz musicians as it was an open city with not much racism.﻿﻿﻿

﻿

Oscar Peterson

In 1968 I lived in a boarding house in the west end of
Vancouver for a few months without a TV and only a radio. Every night I would
listen to a guy named Jack Cullen. He had one of the largest record collections
in the world. If anyone was an authority on music other than rock and roll this
guy was. His musical knowledge stretched all the way back to the late 1920s. He
was a big fan of big band music and crooners and he was great at telling
stories about musicians he had met or seen over the years.

﻿

Jack Cullen

In late 1971 I was living in Toronto and we used to get
drunk at a Holiday Inn sometimes after work while watching a really funny and
dirty Irish comedian. One evening I staggered out of the washroom and heard
some music coming from a large room nearby. I stumbled in and found a seat. A
small jazz orchestra was playing. I was only a few feet away. One guy caught my
eye. There was a highball glass by his feet and every so often he would take a
nip. When his turn came, he brought the horn up to his lips and played
incredibly. At least I thought so. His drinking alcohol and his musical talent
left an impression on me. A lot of jazz musicians have obviously had problems
with alcohol and hard drugs over the years.

About a year later I was living in an attic room in a
downtown Toronto rooming house and had borrowed a record player from a guy from
across the hall. One day I was in Sam The Record Man`s leafing through some
albums when I came across one I decided to buy. It was a double album of big
band music. I can still remember some of the tunes, Artie Shaw`s Begin The
Beguine and Frenesi, Duke Ellington`s Take The A Train, and Bunny Berigan`s I
Can`t Get Started. I was hooked on big band music from the 1930s and 1940s.

Some years later I became fascinated with Artie Shaw.
There is no doubt that in his personal life he was one damned ornery individual
but there is no doubting his musical genius. The guy led one amazing life.
Married some of the most beautiful women in the world, was at the top of his
game for close to 10 years, lived in exotic places, and packed it all in trying
to find some sanity in it all. There is a rumour that he made a lamp out of his
clarinet. On top of all that he lived into his nineties and was teaching music
up until his death.

Artie Shaw

The first live jazz I ever saw was around 1975 in
Hamilton, Ontario, the high octane Maynard Ferguson. His orchestra was made up
of mostly college kids. It kept the overhead costs down I guess. Man oh man
Maynard could blast it.

Maynard Fergusson

It wasn`t until the early 1980s that I started to buy
jazz records and really get to see a number of live jazz groups. One weekend we
were down in Seattle Washington for a weekend and staying at a Holiday Inn in
Bellevue. We decided to grab a cocktail before bed and wandered into a tiny
bar. A black guy was tinkling on the piano. We didn`t know it at the time but
the place, although small, was full of regulars. People sitting at the bar were
called over individually to join the piano player and sing a song or two. It
was one of those sweet memorable evenings for me.

I started to delve into jazz. I tried to break it down a
bit. I knew most of the names of the greats but I was interested in the music
also in a historical sense. I bought a number of compilations and discovered a
lot of great tunes. I also got my hands on a number of books about jazz.
﻿

I love swing and big band music and really don`t give a
shit about jazz perfectionists who think this music was too plastic and contrived.
I could listen to a lot of Glenn Miller, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Artie Shaw,
Benny Goodman any old time. Smooth or jump it all had a sweetness to it. I am
not embarrassed to say I liked Tex Beneke, Helen Forrest or The Andrews
Sisters.

I can`t say I was always a big fan of Bop. I prefer music
with a melody even if the musicians wander away from it for a while. I can
appreciate Miles Davis but sometimes he lost me. Dizzy Gillespie too. Not
always. Just sometimes. It isn`t hard to see the genius in Charlie Parker.

Over the years I have been a big fan of crooners.

Billy Holliday was haunting. Peggy Lee was simply
amazing. Blues In The Night and Why Don`t You Do Right are as good as it gets
as far as I am concerned. Ella Fitzgerald is in a league of her own. She had such
a pure clear voice and was one hell of a scat singer. Dinah Washington and
Anita O`Day could always deliver. I always had a soft spot for Dinah Shore but
there were better women singers.

Peggy Lee

My kids grew up listening to Sinatra in the car. They
still know a lot of his lyrics. I loved most of his music although he could get
a bit corny at times. Nat King Cole was a damned fine piano player aside from
being a great singer. Tony Bennett can still cut it. Mel Torme was probably the
best male scat singer but could be a bit on the hokey side. Sammy Davis Jr. had
a great voice but was terrible at picking songs. Lou Rawls with his baritone
voice and Dean Martin were good singers but you could count on one hand good
songs that they sung. Loved Chet Baker but he wasn`t someone a depressed person
should listen to. Luckily for me I am not the depressed type. I know jazz buffs
like to bring up the name of Johnny Hartman but unfortunately the guy didn`t
ever have a real signature tune.

Frank Sinatra

I`ve always been partial to up tempo lively Latin jazz
with that scratching sound in the background. I`ll take me some Stan Getz
anytime. If I have choice between happy and reflective I`ll take happy.

Stan Getz

﻿

In the 1980s and 1990s I found that I could afford to go
and see pretty well anyone I wanted in the jazz genre when they came to
Vancouver. I saw Paul Horn at a joint on 4th Avenue. We sat about 5
feet away. We saw The Manhattan Transfer at the QE Theatre and Earl Klugh and
Maceo Parker at the Commodore Ballroom. I saw Frank Sinatra the last time he
came through Vancouver out at the Pacific Coluseum. Sammy was the only one left
with a voice. Dean was out of it. His son had died a year or two before. Old
blue eyes, old red eyes, and old one eye….hey it`s a joke!

Paul Horn

I saw Michael Buble when he was starting out at a club
called BaBalu in the basement of a hotel on Granville Street. I had no idea he
would become so big. I can`t think of two better crooners to have the jazz
torch passed to than Michael Buble and Nanaimo`s own Diana Krall.

Diana Krall

I got to see Ray Brown, the great jazz bassist, on his
last trip through Vancouver when he appeared at Rossini`s in Kits. Also saw the
Five Blind Men From Alabama at a big church in Burnaby one night. As an
atheist, even I was carried away in the fervor. I was half expecting to see
John Belushi doing summersaults.

Ray Brown

In the mid 90s I split up with my wife and found myself
with more time to go out and explore Vancouver`s nightlife. I didn`t want to be
the old guy hanging around a younger crowd kind of joint and I kind of
naturally gravitated to places where I might fit in. Most of these places were
jazz places. I hung around the Fairview Pub on Broadway a bit on jazz nights. I
warmed a stool from time to time at Rossini`s in Kits. Linton Garner, the
brother of Erroll Garner, was the house piano player.(Erroll often mumbled
while playing the piano.)

I saw Kenny Coleman a number of times including at the
revolving restaurant on top of the Sheraton Hotel on Robson. Had a few brief
chats with him, once in a club he owned and once when I was having lunch in
Richmond with my ex and he was sitting at the next table. This guy truly has
had an amazing life. He is pretty decent singer too.

I started going to jazz festivals in the 90s including
The Vancouver Jazz Festival. I even went to one on the Hood River in Oregon.
Mostly I saw musicians that were not big names. There are some amazing not so
well known talents out there.

I moved over to Vancouver Island (semi-retirement) and a
place I owned in Fanny Bay in 2005. I took in the North Island Jazz Festival in
Courtenay, BC. I think it has ceased operation. They had a pretty formidable
venue, two different buildings and something going on in both buildings at the
same time. A couple of things really impressed me. One was the first zydeco
band I had ever seen. (A few years later I saw Buckwheat Zydeco at the Queens
in Nanaimo.) The other thing that stuck in my mind was watching a young high
school gal singing and being accompanied by a clarinetist who seemed to be in
his eighties. There are no age barriers in jazz.

After a couple of years in Fanny Bay, I decided to move
down to Victoria. The best jazz joint in town was and probably still is, is a
place called Herman`s. Spent a number of nights in that place. Also took in the
Victoria Jazz Festival. A lot of these festivals bring in musicians and groups
from Europe. Jazz is truly a universal type of music.

The last jazz concert I attended was one with pianist
Oliver Jones (from Montreal) and a combo at the Port Theatre in Nanaimo. That
was about 2 or 3 years ago.

I have a damned good music system but I hardly ever use
it. I have wide collection of jazz CDs but I hardly ever listen to them. Wynton
Marcalis, Eddie Daniels, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, David
Sanborn. That kind of stuff.

David Sanborn

A couple of years ago I discovered what some top quality
speakers can do with a computer. About once or twice a week I take a musical
walk through You Tube. Sometimes I listen to jazz. Sometimes I listen to other
music. Sometimes we light up a joint and listen for hours. Call me an old fool.
I’ve been called worse.

I expect to see and listen to a lot more jazz in my life.
I’m just not obsessed with it. I certainly don’t want to sound preachy but…I
firmly believe that variety is truly the spice of life. There are times when
music is a focal point or a great background and other times are good without
any music at all. There is also something to be said about absence makes the
heart grow fonder. It is nice to know that it can always be pulled out of the
bag.

Followers

About Me

I grew up in Montreal and have spent most of my life living in the Vancouver, B.C. area where I was a businessman for many years. I am now retired and living on Vancouver Island with Linda Spenard and our golden retriever Shelby. R.I.P. Cooper. I have 2 kids, twins, Dean and Leah who are 28.
I can be reached at my e-mail address colinatcove@shaw.ca
Pictures of some of our travels can be found on Picasa.
http://picasaweb.google.com/colinincanada (hasn't been updated for some time).
A special thanks to my older brother David for letting me use his old photos.
Thanks also to Linda Spenard for her photos and support.